Cop tagged in Maguindanao massacre falls

SARANGANI, Philippines - The long hand of law finally caught late Tuesday a former policeman implicated in the Nov. 23, 2009 infamous “Maguindanao Massacre” that left 58 people dead, more than half of them journalists.

Suspect Dimaudtang Masukat, an ethnic Maguindanaon, carried a P250,000 bounty on his head and was cornered by policemen, after two months of surveillance, in Sitio Teneb in Barangay Mindopok, a hinterland area in Maitum town in Sarangani province.

Masukat, whose last rank was Police Officer 2, originally belonged to the Maguindanao provincial police office.

He was last reported as missing a day after the massacre and was, subsequently, dropped from the rolls of the Philippine National Police for absence without leave.

Senior Inspector Marvin Carisma, chief of the Maitum municipal police, said Masukat voluntarily turned himself in after sensing that policemen and soldiers have surrounded his house, ready to shoot him if he would resist arrest.

Masukat is a relative of former Maguindanao Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr., who had ruled the province with an iron hand and apparent intolerance to political opposition.

Carisma said Masukat calmly listened as a policeman read before him the warrant for his arrest issued by Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes of the Regional Trial Court Branch 221 in Quezon City.

Reyes presides over the litigation of the criminal cases against the Ampatuans and members of their private militia and the policemen involved in the massacre.

The victims were on their way to the provincial capitol in Shariff Aguak town in Maguindanao to file the certificate of candidacy for provincial governor of then Buluan Vice-Mayor Esmael Mangudadatu when they were stopped by the Ampatuans and members of their private army, backed by some 100 policemen.

The convoy carrying the 58 victims, among them Mangudadatu’s wife, Genalyn, and several relatives, were herded to a hinterland in Barangay Masalay in Ampatuan municipality, where they were killed one after another using assault rifles and K3 machineguns.

The Ampatuans were opposed to the candidacy then of Mangudadatu, who was to contest the bid for Maguindanao’s gubernatorial post of a senior family member, Andal Ampatuan Jr., also clamped down in jail.

Mangudadatu, unfazed by the incident, persisted with his political ambition and was elected governor during the May 13, 2010 local polls. He conveniently won a second term in another electoral exercise three years later.